“The portrait of a lady,” repeated Loo, slowly. “Young and beautiful.
That much I remember.”
The old nobleman had never removed his covering hand from the locket.
He had never glanced at it himself. He looked slowly round the peering
faces, two and three deep round the table. He was the oldest man
present--one of the oldest in Paris--one of the few now living who had
known Marie Antoinette.
Without uncovering the locket, he handed it to Barebone across the table
with a bow worthy of the old regime and his own historic name.
“It is right that you should be the first to see it,” he said. “Since
there is no longer any doubt that the lady was your father's mother.”
Loo took the locket, looked at it with strangely glittering eyes and
steady lips. He gave a sort of gasp, which all in the room heard. He
was handing it back to the Vicomte de Castel Aunet without a word of
comment, when a crashing fall on the bare floor startled every one. A
lady had fainted.
“Thank God!” muttered Dormer Colville almost in Barebone's ear and
swayed against him. Barebone turned and looked into a face grey and
haggard, and shining with perspiration. Instinctively he grasped him by
the arm and supported him. In the confusion of the moment no one noticed
Colville; for all were pressing round the prostrate lady. And in a
moment Colville was himself again, though the ready smile sat oddly on
such white lips.
“For God's sake be careful,” he said, and turned away, handkerchief in
hand.
For the moment the portrait was forgotten until the lady was on her feet
again, smiling reassurances and rubbing her elbow.
“It is nothing,” she said, “nothing. My heart--that is all.”
And she staggered to a chair with the reassuring smile frozen on her
face.
Then the portrait was passed from hand to hand in silence. It was
a miniature of Marie Antoinette, painted on ivory, which had turned
yellow. The colours were almost lost, but the face stood clearly enough.
It was the face of a young girl, long and narrow, with the hair drawn
straight up and dressed high and simply on the head without ornament.
“It is she,” said one and another. “C'est bien elle.”
“It was painted when she was newly a queen,” commented the Vicomte de
Castel Aunet. “I have seen others like it, but not that one before.”
Barebone stood apart and no one offered to approach him. Dormer Colville
had gone toward the great fireplace, and was standing by himself there
with his back toward the room. He was surreptitiously wiping from his
face the perspiration which had suddenly run down it, as one may see the
rain running down the face of a statue.
Things had taken an unexpected turn. The Marquis de Gemosac, himself
always on the surface, had stirred others more deeply than he had
anticipated or could now understand. France has always been the victim
of her own emotions; aroused in the first instance half in idleness,
allowed to swell with a semi-restraining laugh, and then suddenly
sweeping and overwhelming. History tells of a hundred such crises in the
pilgrimage of the French people. A few more--and historians shall write
“Ichabod” across the most favoured land in Europe.
It is customary to relate that, after a crisis, those most concerned
in it know not how they faced it or what events succeeded it. “He never
knew,” we are informed, “how he got through the rest of the evening.”
Loo Barebone knew and remembered every incident, every glance. He was
in full possession of every faculty, and never had each been so keenly
alive to the necessity of the moment. Never had his quick brain been so
alert as it was during the rest of the evening. And those who had come
to the Hotel Gemosac to confirm their adoption of a figure-head went
away with the startling knowledge in their hearts that they had never
in the course of an artificial life met a man less suited to play that
undignified part.
And all the while, in the back of his mind, there lingered with a deadly
patience the desire for the moment which must inevitably come when he
should at last find himself alone, face to face, with Dormer Colville.
It was nearly midnight before this moment came. At last the latest guest
had taken his leave, quitting the house by the garden door and making
his way across that forlorn and weedy desert by the dim light reflected
from the clouds above. At last the Marquis de Gemosac had bidden them
good night, and they were left alone in the vast bedroom which a dozen
candles, in candelabras of silver blackened by damp and neglect, only
served to render more gloomy and mysterious.
In the confusion consequent on the departure of so many guests the
locket had been lost sight of, and Monsieur de Gemosac forgot to make
inquiry for it. It was in Barebone's pocket.
Colville put together with the toe of his boot the logs which were
smouldering in a glow of incandescent heat. He turned and glanced over
his shoulder toward his companion.
Barebone was taking the locket from his waistcoat pocket and approaching
the table where the candles burnt low in their sockets.
“You never really supposed you were the man, did you?” asked Colville,
with a ready smile. He was brave, at all events, for he took the only
course left to him with a sublime assurance.
Barebone looked across the candles at the face which smiled, and smiled.
“That is what I thought,” he answered, with a queer laugh.
“Do not jump to any hasty decisions,” urged Colville instantly, as if
warned by the laugh.
“No! I want to sift the matter carefully to the bottom. It will be
interesting to learn who are the deceived and who the deceivers.”
Barebone had had time to think out a course of action. His face seemed
to puzzle Colville, who was rarely at fault in such judgments of
character as came within his understanding. But he seemed for an instant
to be on the threshold of something beyond his understanding; and yet
he had lived, almost day and night, for some months with Barebone. Since
the beginning--that far-off beginning at Farlingford--their respective
positions had been quite clearly defined. Colville, the elder by nearly
twenty years, had always been the guide and mentor and friend--the
compulsory pilot he had gaily called himself. He had a vast experience
of the world. He had always moved in the best French society. All that
he knew, all the influence he could command, and the experience upon
which he could draw were unreservedly at Barebone's service. The
difference in years had only affected their friendship in so far as
it defined their respective positions and prohibited any thought of
rivalry. Colville had been the unquestioned leader, Barebone the ready
disciple.
And now in the twinkling of an eye the positions were reversed. Colville
stood watching Barebone's face with eyes rendered almost servile by a
great suspense. He waited breathless for the next words.
“This portrait,” said Barebone, “of the Queen was placed in the locket
by you?”
Colville nodded with a laugh of conscious cleverness rewarded by
complete success. There was nothing in his companion's voice to suggest
suppressed anger. It was all right after all. “I had great difficulty in
finding just what I wanted,” he added, modestly.
“What I remember--though the memory is necessarily vague--was a portrait
of a woman older than this. Her style of dress was more elaborate. Her
hair was dressed differently, with sort of curls at the side, and on
the top, half buried in the hair, was the imitation of a nest--a dove's
nest. Such a thing would naturally stick in a child's memory. It stuck
in mine.”
“Yes--and nearly gave the game away to-night,” said Colville, gulping
down the memory of those tense moments.
“That portrait--the original--you have not destroyed it?”
“Oh no. It is of some value,” replied Colville, almost naively. He
felt in his pocket and produced a silver cigar case. The miniature was
wrapped in a piece of thin paper, which he unfolded. Barebone took the
painting and examined it with a little nod of recognition. His memory
had not failed after twenty years.
“Who is this lady?” he asked.
Dormer Colville hesitated.
“Do you know the history of that period?” he inquired, after a moment's
reflection. For the last hour he had been trying to decide on a course
of conduct. During the last few minutes he had been forced to change it
half a dozen times.
“Septimus Marvin, of Farlingford, is one of the greatest living
authorities on those reigns. I learnt a good deal from him,” was the
answer.
“That lady is, I think, the Duchesse de Guiche.”
“You think--”
“Even Marvin could not tell you for certain,” replied Colville, mildly.
He did not seem to perceive a difference in Barebone's manner toward
himself. The quickest intelligence cannot follow another's mind beyond
its own depth.
“Then the inference is that my father was the illegitimate son of the
Comte d'Artois.”
“Afterward Charles X., of France,” supplemented Colville, significantly.
“Is that the inference?” persisted Barebone. “I should like to know your
opinion. You must have studied the question very carefully. Your opinion
should be of some interest, though--”
“Though--” echoed Colville, interrogatively, and regretted it
immediately.
“Though it is impossible to say when you speak the truth and when you
lie.”
And any who doubted that there was royal blood in Loo Barebone's veins
would assuredly have been satisfied by a glance at his face at that
moment; by the sound of his quiet, judicial voice; by the sudden and
almost terrifying sense of power in his measuring eyes.
Colville turned away with an awkward laugh and gave his attention to the
logs on the hearth. Then suddenly he regained his readiness of speech.
“Look here, Barebone,” he cried. “We must not quarrel; we cannot afford
to do that. And after all, what does it matter? You are only giving
yourself the benefit of the doubt--that is all. For there is a doubt.
You may be what you--what we say you are, after all. It is certain
enough that Marie Antoinette and Fersen were in daily correspondence.
They were both clever--two of the cleverest people in France--and they
were both desperate. Remember that. Do you think that they would have
failed in a matter of such intense interest to her, and therefore to
him? All these pretenders, Naundorff and the others, have proved that
quite clearly, but none has succeeded in proving that he was the man.”
“And do you think that I shall be able to prove that I am the man--when
I am not?”
By way of reply Dormer Colville turned again to the fireplace and took
down the print of Louis XVI. engraved from a portrait painted when he
was still Dauphin. A mirror stood near, and Colville came to the table
carrying the portrait in one hand, the looking-glass in the other.
“Here,” he said, eagerly. “Look at one and then at the other. Look in
the mirror and then at the portrait. Prove it! Why, God has proved it
for you.”
“I do not think we had better bring Him into the question,” was the
retort: an odd reflex of Captain Clubbe's solid East Anglian piety. “No.
If we go on with the thing at all, let us be honest enough to admit
to ourselves that we are dishonest. The portrait in that locket points
clearly enough to the Truth.”
“The portrait in that locket is of Marie Antoinette,” replied Colville,
half sullenly. “And no one can ever prove anything contrary to that. No
one except myself knows of--of this doubt which you have stumbled upon.
De Gemosac, Parson Marvin, Clubbe--all of them are convinced that your
father was the Dauphin.”
“And Miss Liston?”
“Miriam Liston--she also, of course. And I believe she knew it long
before I told her.”
Barebone turned and looked at him squarely in the eyes. Colville
wondered a second time why Loo Barebone reminded him of Captain Clubbe
to-night.
“What makes you believe that?” he asked.
“Oh, I don't know. But that isn't the question. The question is about
the future. You see how things are in France. It is a question of Louis
Napoleon or a monarchy--you see that. Unless you stop him he will be
Emperor before a year is out, and he will drag France in the gutter.
He is less a Bonaparte than you are a Bourbon. You remember that Louis
Bonaparte himself was the first to say so. He wrote a letter to the
Pope, saying so quite clearly. You will go on with it, of course,
Barebone. Say you will go on with it! To turn back now would be death.
We could not do it if we wanted to. I have been trying to think about
it, and I cannot. That is the truth. It takes one's breath away. At the
mere thought of it I feel as if I were getting out of my depth.”
“We have been out of our depths the last month,” admitted Barebone,
curtly.
And he stood reflecting, while Colville watched him.
“If I go on,” he said, at length, “I go on alone.”
“Better not,” urged Colville, with a laugh of great relief. “For
you would always have me and my knowledge hanging over you. If you
succeeded, you would have me dunning you for hush-money.”
Which seemed true enough. Few men knew more of one side of human nature
than Dormer Colville, it would appear.
“I am not afraid of that.”
“You can never tell,” laughed Colville, but his laugh rather paled under
Barebone's glance. “You can never tell.”
“Wise men do not attempt to blackmail--kings.”
And Colville caught his breath.
“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted, after a pause. “You seem to be
taking to the position very kindly, Barebone. But I do not mind, you
know. It does not matter what we say to each other, eh? We have been
good friends so long. You must do as you like. And if you succeed, I
must be content to leave my share of the matter to your consideration.
You certainly seem to know the business already, and some day perhaps
you will remember who taught you to be a King.”
“It was an old North Sea skipper who taught me that,” replied Barebone.
“That is one of the things I learnt at sea.”
“Yes--yes,” agreed Colville, almost nervously. “And you will go on with
the thing, will you not? Like a good fellow, eh? Think about it till
to-morrow morning. I will go now. Which is my candle? Yes. You will
think about it. Do not jump to any hasty decision.”
He hurried to the door as he spoke. He could not understand Barebone at
all.
“If I do go on with it,” was the reply, “it will not be in response
to any of your arguments. It will be only and solely for the sake of
France.”
“Yes--of course,” agreed Colville, and closed the door behind him.
In his own room he turned and looked toward the door leading through to
that from which he had hurriedly escaped. He passed his hand across his
face, which was white and moist.
“For the sake of France!” he echoed in bewilderment. “For the sake of
France! Gad! I believe he IS the man after all.”